5 technologies trends we cannot live without with post-COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the last year, our leaves have changed significantly due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Where this has resulted in difficulties for certain industries such as the hospitality, entertainment sectors. But it has also shown there are opportunities, especially in the technology industry.  Now one simply cannot get around technology as it plays such a crucial role in keeping our society functional. In particular these difficult times of lockdowns and quarantines. We had found these are the top 8 technologies that stood out that we cannot live without with post-COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Online Shopping and Robot Deliveries

Shopping from a users perspective has transformed dramatically, with shops closed due to the governments restricting only essentially shopping to be done. This meant that traditional high street retailers had to think of new innovative ways of reaching their customers. Soon enough followed a significant influx of online shopping from a nice-to-have to a must-have around the world. This resulted in that online shopping needs to be supported with a reliable logistics system. This means, coming up with a secure platform where there are to be no breaches of hackers trying to manipulate their data. Several companies in China have taken this to a new level in their development in creating robot deliveries to ensure the client gets their goods on the same. This may seem all good and well-having robot delivery services become prevalent, but companies would first need to ensure that there are clear protocols to safeguard the sanitary condition of delivered goods.

2. Contactless Payments

There has been a study showing that when using cash the virus can be transmitted, leading to certain stores not accepting cash anymore. This as a result has again been a large benefit for organisations that were in the digital payment space as it enables people to make online purchases and payments of goods much quicker. According to the World Bank, there are more than 1.7 billion unbanked people, who may not have easy access to digital payments. The availability of digital payments also relies on internet availability, devices and a network to convert cash into a digitalized format.

3. Remote Work

This one may seem obvious but many companies have asked employees to work from home. Work from home has been completely been reimaged in that it has enabled technologies including virtual private networks (VPNs), virtual meetings, work collaboration tools and even facial recognition technologies that help enable a person to appear before a virtual background to preserve the privacy of the home. Remote working has saved people the commute and provide a lot more flexibility from when and where they work. Yet remote work also imposes challenges to employers and employees. As good as work from home may sound there have been signs that employees may experience loneliness and lack of work-life balance. 

4. Distance Learning

One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, close to half the world’s students are still affected by partial or full school closures, and over 100 million additional children will fall below the minimum proficiency level in reading as a result of the health crisis. Prioritizing education recovery is crucial to avoid a generational catastrophe as highlighted in a high-level ministerial meeting in March 2021. Resulting in that educational centres have relied heavily on technologies in distant learning that are similar to those for remote work and also include virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing. Concerns about distance learning include the possibility the technologies could create children to have a significant decrease in overall productivity at work.

5. Streaming Entertainment

The impact of COVID-19 on movie theatres has accelerated two preexisting trends: More people are staying home to enjoy movies and other entertainment, and more studios and media distributors are developing their direct-to-consumer streaming services. While theatres have suffered heavily from stay-at-home norms, studios have also been deeply challenged. If theatres have a diminished role in the windowing system—the schedule of exclusive exhibition periods across theatres, home video, cable and TV, and streaming it could force changes in how content deals are financed, what the terms for distribution look like, and how studios make money from their productions.